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high speed trains

2007-04-03 16:20:45.419149+00 by Dan Lyke 1 comments

Yowza! French train sets record at 357.2 MPH. I wonder if, at that speed at ground level, it's any more efficient than an airplane?

[ related topics: Aviation Trains ]

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#Comment Re: made: 2007-04-03 17:06:26.441471+00 by: Dan Lyke

Here's an article which claims that they were drawing 19.6 megawatts. According to the Wikipedia Fuel efficiency in transportation page which cites a French study on emissions and rail travel (which is a PDF served up with the wrong MIME type), the current TGV trains pull about 18.00 kWh/train-km or roughly 506 passenger-mpg.

So at a thousand times the current draw and only 3x the speed, that's quite a bit less efficient than air travel.